(05-01-2013 06:04 PM)Momsurroundedbyboys Wrote: I totally respect your passion. I did watch all the vid's on VP, it is all rather fascinating. There were parts that kinda bugged me...

Well, I guess you mean the parts that expose the crisis of the current system. They're quite disturbing. Capitalism doesn't work, the better it works, the jobs are replaced by machines, the more out of job we are, the lesser is our purchasing power.

Neat. I pretty much agree, but I have no utopian notions of it. I think that most people can be convinced to do such a thing with a large enough paradigm shift, but there will always be those people that put self-interest above all other concerns. Granted, our current system incentivises the pursuit of self-interest and some batshit crazy lunatics <cough cough Ayn Rand cough cough> consider it a virtue as well. So perhaps that's just my cycnicism talking and in a system that disincentivises self-interest, we'll see less of it.

As for expanding your concern out, check out this fantastic video:

STAR TREK

Yep. It rocks. Roddenberry was a genius. Too bad the people that inherited his legacy are not quite as intelligent. The JJ Abrahms Star Trek was about as morally distant from Roddenberry's vision as you can get. Le sigh.

SCARCITY

Quote:There is something worse than scarcity and it is the law of nature.

Just as a lead off, that sentence makes no sense to me.

As for the migration into the New World, the notion that they hunted species to extinction deliberately is a misnomer. The species here never had to deal with humans before. Humans were an invasive species. We became a selection pressure for them and they went extinct. Happens all the time. It's a markedly different process than say, hunting wolves to extinction; a very deliberate act.

As for the buffalo, they were just smart about their food supply. They took only what they needed and ensured that they never poisoned the well as it were. But because they had no way of increasing the buffalo population (meaning increasing carrying capacity) they were subject to the ebb and flow of the herd. If the herd dipped to a point below subsistence, if they took too much regardless, they risked the herd entire. So they never did. So sometimes they had to sinch up their belts, or let an infant die, or not have any kids. That's the boom and bust cycle that every single organism on the planet is subject to, save for those humans that have the ability to arbitrarily increase carrying capacity. But like I said before, that ultimately catches up with us.

You write very poetically. I agree with a lot of what you say. Sometimes I get a little lost in the poetry and want to make sure that I agree with the mechanics of what you're saying. But, and I say this with just slight reservation, by and large we agree on most things... to this point

That being said, I have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of The Great Businessman. The analogy makes me feel yucky.

HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM

This notion is a polyp on the anus of mankind. It's horseshit.

We don't say that sharks aren't just another animal, they're special because they have six senses to our measly five. That's ridiculous.

All organisms have different traits. There are no better or worse traits. The value of traits are contingent on a given environment in a given time.

Humans are animals. Full stop. We are 100% a part of the biosphere and every local ecosystem we inhabit. Any other suggestion is both false and dangerous.

The trait that we possess, a cultural trait, that almost no other species possesses, is the ability to increase carrying capacity (there are other agricultural species, like ants). (I'm not suggesting that that's the only different trait, but the one that's germane to this conversation)

I've never liked the term custodian. It is associated with the notion that the planet was made for us, which is BS. The planet requires no custodian. I do agree however, that we have the energy and the ability to increase carrying capacity for other species. I recently watched a documentary that spoke about how the Amazon is largely a human construction. Many of the tribes, through deliberate action, made it much more lush and fertile.

ME? WRONG? NEVER!

Well most of the time anyway. This time in particular.

Quote:For all the time in our history, we operated under the law of nature. We were driven to expand, because almost nobody was well off. It was a top-heavy system. The way things were, people at the top accumulated wealth at the detriment of others, which forced the people at the bottom to expand and produce many children (workforce, soldiers). It probably started with agrarian revolution, because the stuff you can hunt and gather won't last long, but grain can be accumulated. So this is not an inevitable human nature, it's an inevitable human reaction to a top-heavy system.

You know how in math, the teacher doesn't just want to see your answer, he wants to see your work too? This is like that for me. Some terminology and conceptual ideas aside, I basically agree with your conclusions, but I get the feeling that if I saw your work that I'd be a little on the horrified side

Cool. I get the demographic transition thing.

But it doesn't change my opinion in the slightest. I've already accounted for it.

Buckle up

Replacement birthrate is 2.1 children. Virtually all of the Western countries are below that. I think Japan is down near like 1.3. So pretty much all of the Western countries have negative birth rates. And I fully agree, this has everything to do with standard of living. But the mechanics work differently than you imagine. And industrialising the entire planet is probably the worst thing we could possibly do.

I assume you know the ecological footprint model. The equasion is simple (and I use a simplified version here for ease of communication). How many people x per capita consumption = total supply.

In the west, footprints are up near 7, 9, 10. In third world countries it's 2, 1, even below 1. So even though industrial nations have more total supply than third world countries, third world countries can have higher populations because the per capita consumption variable (footprint) is so low.

When we look at countries like India, we see a very high total population, which in the context of what they have, means that per capita consumption must be low. This is why we have larger populations in poor countries. Each person consumes less. They still grow to their food supply though. In places like Haiti, their per capita consumption is kept low, but so is their population because of their crushing national poverty.

What you can see clearly from those equations is that slight variations in any of those variables affects the others. There is an inverse relationship between population and consumption and the product of both is governed by overall supply.

So what we have in first world countries is a situation in which population is kept low, not because of crushing poverty as in Haiti, but because the standard of living is so high. It costs almost nothing to raise a child in India or Haiti, so we see much higher birth rates. It costs a bloody fortune to raise a child in the West. Houses and cars be damned, a child is the single biggest investment you will ever make in your life. So it makes it almost impossible to have six kids unless you're truly wealthy (understanding that footprint is an average, meaning you'll have some people in the populace with both much higher and much lower footprints and much higher and much lower access to resources).

The problem is that every economy on the planet is based on unlimited growth. When birthrates drop, it means that more people will exit the economy as seniors than there will be young people entering it. This would collapse any economy in the world. But because birthrates remain high in the Third World, Western countries can make up for the population shortfall through immigration. Every Western nation welcomes tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes more than a million immigrants per year in order to keep up with economic growth demands. This is one of the reasons they say that the First World cannot exist without the Third World.

If we industrialise the whole planet, two things will occur. 1 - The global economy will collapse because the birthrate will go negative everywhere as standard of living goes up globally. 2 - We will rape the fuck out of the planet. The planet's getting hammered just by the West. Imagine six times as many people extracting and polluting like us. Ecological footprint has made it plainly clear. Because of the West, we're already in deficit spending. It takes 1.5 years for the planet to regenerate what we take in 1 year. If the footprint came up to Western levels globally, it would take 4.5 years for the planet to regenerate what we took in a year. That deficit spending would not last long.

Not only all of that, but every one of these newly industrialised societies will still be based on the unlimited growth model, so footprint would continue to climb, exacerbating the problem.

If we want everyone on the planet to have a kick ass super-high standard of living, we can't do it with 7 billion people. Impossible. The population has to be way lower. WAY lower. Which brings up the question, how is that achieved? With great difficulty. Not only that, but if we drop the global population down to, say, a billion, or 500 million, without addressing how the unlimited growth economy functions, that economy will collapse.

It's quite the can of shitty worms.

So if RBE is a growth model, then it's just more of the same. If it fixes its total supply somehow, then populations might stabalise, but fixing total supply requires an entirely different economic approach because such an action would collapse the current model; not recession, not depression, collapse. In order for that fixed number to be sustainable it would either have to be well bellow carrying capacity, so that when there were dips, ie scarcity, we'd have a large buffer, meaning we wouldn't necessarily go into overshoot; OR it would have to have some system that allows for the adjustment of that fixed number during periods of scarcity (meaning a mechanism that reduces standard of living for the duration of scarcity; and meaning that the fixed number is not actually fixed, but rather tacked to carrying capacity) OR BOTH.

NOT POPULATION BUT CONSUMPTION

Both of those are incorrect.

The limit has to be placed on PRODUCTION.

In the population x consumption = supply equation, there is an inverse relationship between population and consumption. Population goes up, consumption drops. Consumption goes up, population drops. All a reduction in consumption will do is increase the population. Just look at India for evidence of that.

But if we reduce production, that is something that reduces SUPPLY. In the equation, if supply drops, BOTH population and consumption MUST drop as a matter of course.

But reducing production is impossible in our current system. It doesn't exist.

BEST OF ALL WORLDS

There's no reason that everyone in the world can't live with a First World standard of living. The only problem is that it cannot be done with our current population and it cannot occur within our current economic system because it would mean the ruin of the planet.

But if we adopt another system, whatever that system may be, that allows us to drop production through the floor, then that will correct the current situation. But once we reach some stable level, the new system needs to have a mechanism that will keep it there. The growth model needs to be replaced whole hog. The new model needs to take into account the boom and bust cycle of the biosphere and tack it's overall production to that. If we decide upon a desirable standard of living, then the movement of those two variables, supply and consumption, will dictate where our population lies. And I can guarantee one thing, it wouldn't be no 7 billion people.

(07-01-2013 09:12 AM)Ghost Wrote: You write very poetically. I agree with a lot of what you say. Sometimes I get a little lost in the poetry and want to make sure that I agree with the mechanics of what you're saying. But, and I say this with just slight reservation, by and large we agree on most things... to this point

Thanks! English isn't my first language. And when I write on such topics, I am influenced by the style of my sources, the esoteric books and articles, though it flows from my mind quite naturally, when I'm focused on the universal pattern of ideas.

(07-01-2013 09:12 AM)Ghost Wrote: That being said, I have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of The Great Businessman. The analogy makes me feel yucky.

HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM

This notion is a polyp on the anus of mankind. It's horseshit.

We don't say that sharks aren't just another animal, they're special because they have six senses to our measly five. That's ridiculous.

All organisms have different traits. There are no better or worse traits. The value of traits are contingent on a given environment in a given time.

Humans are animals. Full stop. We are 100% a part of the biosphere and every local ecosystem we inhabit. Any other suggestion is both false and dangerous.

The trait that we possess, a cultural trait, that almost no other species possesses, is the ability to increase carrying capacity (there are other agricultural species, like ants). (I'm not suggesting that that's the only different trait, but the one that's germane to this conversation)

I've never liked the term custodian. It is associated with the notion that the planet was made for us, which is BS. The planet requires no custodian. I do agree however, that we have the energy and the ability to increase carrying capacity for other species. I recently watched a documentary that spoke about how the Amazon is largely a human construction. Many of the tribes, through deliberate action, made it much more lush and fertile.

ME? WRONG? NEVER!

Well most of the time anyway. This time in particular.

I see I wasn't clear enough, not for someone like you, who's very wary of human exceptionalism. If I said humans are exceptional, I meant that we have an exceptional potential. In the metaphor, the nature, the great businessman made a great investment into us, to see if we manifest that potential.

It is a title that has to be earned. First we have to prove that we are exceptional, prove, that there is an intelligent life on Earth. And prove that over and over again every time we encounter a great obstacle to humanity. I do believe we have this potential and that we absolutely must manifest it, because we clearly aren't willing to die out as a well-behaved part of biosphere would. We want extra privilieges, so we must have extra duties.

But I like the term custodian. I'd say it implies the planet was NOT made of us, that we're merely caretakers, not owners, and that we have certain duties. To increase the carrying capacity is a good thing - but to not use it is even better, an investment into the future. There is also another thing we can do - we can increase the quality instead of capacity, what about that? The nature might be measured not only by a number of wild animals living there, but perhaps by a number of animals that our geneticists domestified for us as pets. (Warning: weapon grade degrees of cuteness in there)

(07-01-2013 09:12 AM)Ghost Wrote: You know how in math, the teacher doesn't just want to see your answer, he wants to see your work too? This is like that for me. Some terminology and conceptual ideas aside, I basically agree with your conclusions, but I get the feeling that if I saw your work that I'd be a little on the horrified side

Riiight, I always disliked that kind of work. But wait a moment. I don't study quite what I want yet. When I'll get to the study of sociology, I hope they'll let me write about the universal pattern/principles of society. It seems that good people intuitively know and use them, but nobody had yet explicitly put it on paper. Only my esoteric sources, but I have understood what they meant only very recently. It is strange they wrote the sentences in a cryptic, simple and ceremonial way, yet hiding such a deep, hidden and useful meaning. But then, people like me would have nothing to write about

But it doesn't change my opinion in the slightest. I've already accounted for it.

Buckle up

Yes, you're completely right. This is exactly why I'm so enthusiastic about RBE. It's definitely not a growth system. If anything, it's a sustainable system, it's so typical in designing everything built to last, be updateable, modular, repairable and recyclable - and efficient. Not a dozen brands of cars that all do the same thing, but something that does the same job using much less resources. The current civilization is comparatively wasteful, even if only a part of humanity lives a high standard.

I can't not mention it - for example, when you see Earth from space, it's alight with streetlights and cities, a web of road lights. Can you imagine how much energy that consumes, how much carbon? There was a video somewhere that I can't find. It featured a nice invention, a layer of graphene on a layer of a common OLED display. As you know, graphene produces electricity when exposed to light. And it can be made to catch infrared light. And the OLED layer in turn produces the light back - but in a visible image. This is how a simple thin layer can be made, that gives out a full-blown night vision. This layer can be made any size and can be put on everything, glasses and car windows. So we can turn off the streetlights and use the iron elsewhere. Graphene layer on window panes may produce electricity all day. Graphene membrane in water pipes may filter a pure water with no additional energy or machinery needed.
And believe it or not, graphene is a special form of carbon, that can be magnetized! Both carbon sheets and nanotubes, apparently. [1][2][3] In RBE such solutions could be implemented everywhere at once, without waiting if they win in the price-oriented market competition.

But you should also know this is not my only source of conceptual framework. There is a man I admire, but you need to be very open-minded in judging him. He gives a social/cultural meaning and context that is missing in the engineer Fresco's RBE. He's very spiritual, yet very practical. He was the one who made me realize, that politics and economy are also very important and very spiritual things and that there is no spirituality without its practical, working manifestation in terms of the real world. I've also had some unusual experiences that give him credibility in my eyes. I need to make sense of these experiences and so I need someone who does provide a working hypothesis and yet isn't dogmatic about it.

This man wrote books and I've read them. But the books I read, the passages relating to the world problems and solutions, it was like giving me back what I already knew, only in much better words. He didn't have to convince me, because we think alike, only he's better at it. Therefore I'd like to see the ideas judged on their own merit and perhaps mine, not this man's. He speaks my language, but it is not the language of people on this forum. It is my modest pride that I can speak more "languages" than my own, understand more conceptual frameworks than my own, and perhaps introduce the benefits from one conceptual framework into another, without setting off a woo alarm and an allergic reaction to certain words that local skeptics react to automatically.
So if you want, I can point you towards him online through a private message, but you probably won't appreciate the content unless you pick particular books or articles on the contemporary world problems. To appreciate the rest of it, you'd need some very unusual experiences. Otherwise there's a lot of information you'd have no use for.

What is your first language if you don't mind me asking? And for the record, you have an excellent command of English.

I agree that custodian means caretaker. But the fact remains that the planet doesn't require a caretaker. It's not our ordained position. I mean, if we want to do constructive things, great. But this notion that the planet needs our help is absurd.

Increasing carrying capacity can quite easily be a terrible thing. In any given moment, there is a fixed amount of biomass on the planet. We can increase the overall supply of biomass, which is cool. But what we do is constantly increase our share of the pie by converting what's there into humans, human food and food for human food. By that I mean, say (arbitrarilly) that 5 000 years ago, humans used 1% of the planet's biomass and today we use 50%. That 49% of the world's biomass is no longer used by other species. We're hogging it. By hogging it, we're increasing the carrying capacity of our environments, but we aren't doing them any favours.

But not using it? That is better. But a system based on unlimited growth requires a constant and ever increasing stream of inputs; therefore, it will always chew into new resources. We need to ditch the growth imperative before that kind of idea can survive.

Increasing quality is great. Our current system disincentivises it though. An increase in quality essentially amounts to an increase in inputs, meaning a higher footprint. If supply stays the same, then we see the inverse relationship between footprint and population in action. The more stuff each person uses, the fewer people we can support.

I believe that you believe that RBE isn't a growth system. I believe that you believe that it's sustainable. I just don't know anything about the mechanisms or RBE so I can't determine whether it actually is, or if it just thinks it is, or if it's false advertising. Can you think which mechanism prevent growth? And can you articulate why it's sustainable?

The closed-loop production model is infinitely smarter than the linear one. If RBE promotes closed-loop productions, then that's just great m'kay.

In RBE, is production state controlled? How does that work?

Your bit about graphine reminded my why I dislike the green movement. All of the solutions that people are coming up with for our terrible products, is more product. This is economics 101; investors don't give a fuck what they produce, so long as people are buying it. So if the sum total of global economic activity shifts from shit technologies to green ones, we're still just as fucked, because the overall level of production stays the same.

What is your first language if you don't mind me asking? And for the record, you have an excellent command of English.

Hey Matt!
It's hard to tell about my first language, at home I spoke in local dialect as a child and in father's Slovak language. There's also a lot of Polish around. But I like my national Czech language, of the mainstream society. I don't like the dialect or any language I don't know enough, because it's limiting in terms of ideas and topics to talk about. It's also very annoying to switch between languages as family members go by
As for English, I was on a couple of other forums before I came here. Using English to discuss interesting topics is the best learning method. I translated a book and a half (unofficially, tax reasons) and translated many articles with political and spiritual topics.

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: I agree that custodian means caretaker. But the fact remains that the planet doesn't require a caretaker. It's not our ordained position. I mean, if we want to do constructive things, great. But this notion that the planet needs our help is absurd.

It's a philosophic point, really. We are the only ones capable of doing constructive things around here, so we might as well accept the job of caretakers. We probably won't get any clearer invitation than that. I suppose when the problems of humanity are solved, many of us might find a great field of expression in genetic engineering of plants and animals. The crudest jobs might involve decreasing animal suffering if we want to eat them (I don't suppose we'll stop that anytime soon) by breeding them brainless and with fewest non-edible parts as possible. A bizarre and drastic idea indeed, I know, but it might be much easier than to grow meat in vats, to simply a create genetic strain of an organism that is in itself a meat vat, not really resembling the original animal. The actual growing facilities might look like a next volume of the Silent Hill series, but certainly less nightmarish than they are now. Let's leave the real animals to people who can take care of them properly.

Other less crude jobs might involve designing bacteria and plants to clear away toxic pollution in soil, or even animals designed to remove invasive species that decimate a local ecosystem or support some crops. And finally, a form of genetic engineering might create new kinds of tame pets or more intelligent animals to help with some daily jobs, like helping out blind, disabled or very old people. A dog is a wonderful animal, but it has no hands. A chimp is way too strong and dangerous. Of course, I suppose the caretaking will involve restoring beauty and ecosystem to regions destroyed by a heavy industry. I suppose this beauty won't be usually as wild and harsh as in an original nature, but it will be more friendly to casual human hikers.
I don't know if we're doing this for the planet, but we'd certainly do it for ourselves and there sure is a lot of work to do. Somewhere along this work we might indeed develop a caretaker attitude towards the animals and plants. I suggest you read the excellent Uplift books, it's a sci-fi series written by the scientist David Brin. It's basically about a galactic civilization uplifting animal species into sentience as an "offspring" of sorts and it's also a lot about ecology and planetology, even a little planet-engineering here and there.

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: Increasing carrying capacity can quite easily be a terrible thing. In any given moment, there is a fixed amount of biomass on the planet. We can increase the overall supply of biomass, which is cool. But what we do is constantly increase our share of the pie by converting what's there into humans, human food and food for human food. By that I mean, say (arbitrarilly) that 5 000 years ago, humans used 1% of the planet's biomass and today we use 50%. That 49% of the world's biomass is no longer used by other species. We're hogging it. By hogging it, we're increasing the carrying capacity of our environments, but we aren't doing them any favours.

But not using it? That is better. But a system based on unlimited growth requires a constant and ever increasing stream of inputs; therefore, it will always chew into new resources. We need to ditch the growth imperative before that kind of idea can survive.

I completely agree, though I have problems to get this idea of abolishing the growth into capitalist heads, obsessed with "freedom". They don't realize that freedom is just taking on more duty to stop ourselves before we step over the line. Without freedom, it means there is someone or something else to stop us. But there's always the stopping. Anything else than that is unilateralism, or as I call it for lack of a better term, douchebaggery. I probably shouldn't say that to them, but... A cancer cell is a normal cell, that just wanted to be free

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: Increasing quality is great. Our current system disincentivises it though. An increase in quality essentially amounts to an increase in inputs, meaning a higher footprint. If supply stays the same, then we see the inverse relationship between footprint and population in action. The more stuff each person uses, the fewer people we can support.

The point is, quality does not mean to increase inputs. It either leaves them or decreases them. Quality is efficient, in some technologies it means less to do the same job and/or do it better. Quality is efficient, the produced stuff lasts much longer, so we need less of it. If designed so, it's also easily recyclable and repairable. Given enough of a pool of resources, we might stop heavy mining operations and just recycle it all, or maybe filter something additional from sea water.
But another area of quality we need is the quality of life. To live a good life we need good relationships and we also need a purpose. There is no naturally given purpose, so we need a science of creating a purpose. If the art is created with a purpose in mind, so can be life. We need to find out about our material - ourselves, that is, and then use the instruments from the society's workshop to improve and shape ourselves in any way we want, to achieve the wanted aesthetic effect of our lives and a meaningful work, so that each of us can die with a sense of accomplishment. We need a world where every day has a meaning, where no two days are the same. Perhaps it's our natural function. Bees make honey, yeast makes alcohol, humans make purpose.

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: I believe that you believe that RBE isn't a growth system. I believe that you believe that it's sustainable. I just don't know anything about the mechanisms or RBE so I can't determine whether it actually is, or if it just thinks it is, or if it's false advertising. Can you think which mechanism prevent growth? And can you articulate why it's sustainable?

The closed-loop production model is infinitely smarter than the linear one. If RBE promotes closed-loop productions, then that's just great m'kay.

RBE is a very nebulous, fuzzy thing, yet it's the most concrete idea. It may the technology level that we have today, but in a completely different way. There are aspects of RBE already in use, because nothing else really provides for you in this harsh, competitive world.
I'd like you to think about the idea of a family. If a family used the free market capitalism, it would destroy itself. A family collectively uses everything according to their needs and available resources. A family is basically a small unit of Communism. Americans would be horrified to realize, that they perform Communism wholesale.
It's called housekeeping and parenting

For example, some Japanese companies use a gimmick called just-in-time (JIT) management. They measure how much resources do they need, they predict the consumption and demand and they order the new resources from providers, so they arrive just in time. This eliminates the need to keep a warehouse and items in it for a long time, which would be inefficient.
Other companies track watch the shipments in real time through the net or satellite, as they go around the world through cities, seas and states, they know where everything is and when it's likely to arrive. I also already mentioned the manufactured houses, some of which are movable and moddable.
And of course, we have the great stock market facilities, all with dials and computers, that might be actually converted to displaying kilograms, tons and liters of nationally and globally available materials, instead their much contrived and imaginary prices I mean for the basic, preliminary phases of limited sharing of some resources, not when the RBE is fully set up.

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: In RBE, is production state controlled? How does that work?

Let's say we have a production facility. Let's say it's a municipal property and municipality is a public corporation and having a citizenship means having a membership and a share in this corporation, which is almost the same thing as we have today - only we don't have the share. If you want to get legal...
But nevermind, we have a production facility, that is automated as much as possible. There are a few people to watch over it or maintain it, glad to do the job, because they're appreciated for that and they enjoy the calming bubbling of hydroponics - and maybe they anyway just watch the readings and webcams a few times per day on an application over the smartphone, unless they get a warning from the system.
Because the system is linked to the internet. It gives out information on how much and what does it produce, for example food. There is let's say a municipal computer core, that keeps track of these resources. This computer core also keeps track of people's demand for resources, for example how much food to they consume in municipal restaurants on a given day statistics and how many people there are anyway.
There must be some standardized and automated boxing and transport systems around, even if it would mean installing a few robotic arms into a hydroponic farm. There must be a kind of "stuff metro" around the city, to send things around automatically. So the local system keeps the track of supply and of people's demand that is done in any simple and digital way, I don't know, smartphone app perhaps.

But it gets more interesting when a neighbouring city computer core finds out it lacks something. It sends a call to other city cores to find a nearest one that has the needed thing in a needed surplus amount. Then the city core likely harvests the thing, boxes it and puts it onto the nearest automatic maglev train that links all the cities. Of course it doesn't have to be just a city core, such a resource-tracking computers should be anywhere that things are produced, on sea farms and so on.

It would be an interesting tasks for gastronomists, cooks, nutrition experts and engineers to invent a new cuisine that is tasty, versatile, efficient yet completely machine-produced and tailored to products from automatic farms. Yet it wouldn't be anything new for them, they already do that in a less systematic way. Modern chefs use some sophisticated equipment in their kitchens, the simpliest of which seems to be the centrifuge. And believe it or not, for a moment I've found myself in such a food factory, a couple of years ago in France. ngage-/securite-et-qualite/les-outils-de-production.html]food factory[/url], a couple of years ago in France. I've never thought it could be a useful experience, but now I see they actually implemented some RBE/planning techniques and given resources, technology and incentive, they could go all the way.

To sum it up, I'd say RBE means to do whatever we already do to keep up with increasing demand (for quality), only to do it in a much more systematic and standardized way.

To tame the beast with twin heads of supply and demand, we need standardized and sophisticated ways of production, transportation, recycling, communication, energy gathering... It must be all standardized, yet it must be wisely designed to be modular, updateable, repairable and recyclable. Think of Lego blocks, how many things you can make of them, yet they fit all together. It is a good thing to build things abstract and universal, so they're easy to replace, update and extend.
I suppose in the future big industrial city logistics the food will be various, but perhaps less elaborate (more Asian style?) and certainly it'll be boxed in a standardized packages, easy to lock into, freeze, stack, transport, clean automatically and equipped with built-in rot and mildew sensors or something. Unless of course you have cooking as a hobby.
But I think I saw somewhere an article for a restaurant in a Brazil city that received food directly from farmers, no expensive in-betweens, and with some government subsidy it produced very cheap meals and it was popular among all kinds of people, not only the poor. As I said, it's about being more systematic.

(08-01-2013 09:09 PM)Ghost Wrote: Your bit about graphine reminded my why I dislike the green movement. All of the solutions that people are coming up with for our terrible products, is more product. This is economics 101; investors don't give a fuck what they produce, so long as people are buying it. So if the sum total of global economic activity shifts from shit technologies to green ones, we're still just as fucked, because the overall level of production stays the same.

Well, it must stay the same, this is how this system works. They can't give you a perfect product, they can only sell you a slightly better product than you have now. Or that would put them out of business.
But my hope for graphene is, that with the magnetization technique it would produce real computers, not just some wonderful material applications. At worst, we'd use a layer of silicene for the computing parts, that seems cheap enough too. But currently we use many rare elements for the electronics, like indium and tantal. And they have to be mined, usually in Congo or China. To create a computer, it takes a few tons of raw material. A ton of ore per chip or something like that. If all computing and conductive parts were made of engineered carbon nanostructures, we'd make computers out of charcoal and (solar) energy. We'd print the damn things on toilet paper, to diagnose pregnancy and disease!

The issue I have with custodian or caretaker is that they both elevate us. We have authority over the biosphere. I prefer to think of us as partners. Equal partners with everything else.

I'm not a big fan of GMO. We don't know enough about the biosphere to start introducing new organisms into it. Our track record to date is pretty abysmal.

I mean, the things you're talking about speak of a sense that we have the right to do with life as we see fit. We can design it how we like, use it how we like. There's something perverse about that.

On growth, capitalists cannot be turned away from growth because it's the foundation of their system. To abandon it is to abandon capitalism entirely. Ie, they would no longer be capitalists if they abandoned growth.

On the quality and inputs thing, I get what you're saying about needing to produce less, but the inputs needed to make a better product than a similar cheap product is greater. So I'm willing to concede that it's a little murkier than I characterised it.

Quality of life. Absolutely. Daniel Quinn once said something awesome. Our system is good for products and bad for people. The egalitarian systems of the past (and some that have survived through to today) are good for people but bad for products.

Humans make purpose. Interesting sentiment.

I didn't understand your answer to the anti-growth mechanism question.

Yeah, I'm not getting the mechanics of RBE. All of that maglev stuff went over my head.

I don't know this one... Google says he's in NHL. All right, depending on the elections I just voted in, you'll also hear of the first green-skinned president on Earth

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: The issue I have with custodian or caretaker is that they both elevate us. We have authority over the biosphere. I prefer to think of us as partners. Equal partners with everything else.

I suppose you're wary of the idea of hierarchy, because it can be and was misused in the past.
Believe it or not, people are not equal. We're equal only in our rights and dignity, not in other things. It is therefore a natural thing to organize into hierarchies, as long as these hierarchies are based on personal merit and appreciation of the lower to the higher one and respect of the higher to the lower ones.
This is the case in parenthood, at school, at work and even in some social groups. I'm merely pointing out a social and legal fact.
The safer we are from tyranny, the more we can organize ourselves voluntarily and efficiently. If we ever find out an objective, useful and humane method to classify living beings in a hierarchy, I'd welcome it. Ignorant as we are now, we have no choice but to consider humans a kind of animal and the most sentient one we know of. In my experience this is not so. But even without it, we are like gods to our dogs and cats, which is a kind of hierarchic relationship and a duty, chosen by the animal also. (cats being often rather ambivalent in their faith, but nevertheless )

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: I'm not a big fan of GMO. We don't know enough about the biosphere to start introducing new organisms into it. Our track record to date is pretty abysmal.

GM is a powerful and dangerous technology and it requires a great caution, probably also more expertise than we have today. And a different motivation than commercial, of course. But I'm all for it, and specially in humans. Human genetic modification may allow live replacement organs to be grown and then implanted. Furthermore, what I've heard from people who do this kind of job, their job involves for example adding certain genes to the crops, so that they produce vitamins and other healthy substances that they did not have before. If done intelligently, it can do a lot of good. However, it can not and will not solve scarcity of food on the planet, that's a problem of the market system failure.

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: I mean, the things you're talking about speak of a sense that we have the right to do with life as we see fit. We can design it how we like, use it how we like. There's something perverse about that.

It is, within the relationships we maintain today, with the average consciousness of today. Consciousness is not a fixed or sacred value, it can be and should be evolved, or as is commonly said, raised. This process has a beneficial effect on people's lives, though it is not always easy or pleasant. (though there are ecstatic periods, I must say) It's a struggle, but it's benefit for our live can be demonstrated in practice. Then there are relationships, again, there are right and wrong ones and they can be objectively distinguished (I wrote a paper on that, must translate it someday). To estabilish the right ones, we need some kind of active effort to make it so, it won't happen by itself.
When this kind of work is underway, humanity will be able to safely and wisely use powerful technologies and otherwise controversial methods. You surely heard that our technology got ahead of our moral development. Well, to equalize the field again we need kind of a moral and philosophic know-how. I believe I have an access to it, just like many others, I might be just a bit more explicit than most of them. It's of course open for scrutiny.
I've read about incredibly smart people, Socrates, Plato and even some contemporaries, and man, they were really smart! I'd trust them with risky jobs like recognizing what is good and what is bad, even recognizing between the lesser good and the greater good and using right means for right purpose. And it's possible for an average person to become more like them. Ethics isn't apples, it doesn't grow on trees, so how do we grow equal in ethics to the technology we have? If we had put just a part of effort into ethical and personal development as we put into business and making money...

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: On growth, capitalists cannot be turned away from growth because it's the foundation of their system. To abandon it is to abandon capitalism entirely. Ie, they would no longer be capitalists if they abandoned growth.

Capitalism on local level can be kept in check. It's the only place where capitalism really belong, to diversify the production according to local needs. Such people are more useful doing what they do as producers than as taxpayers. And if you need to confine the growth... Have you ever heard of local currencies? It's possible even to make a currency that loses value over time, so people are motivated to spend it, invest it and not leave it growing or rotting in a bank.
But even without money, capitalism is a valid idea, a problem-solving mindset, a method of dealing with inputs you have. There's still the material input, just one less to worry about, the money. The only reason why we need money is to motivate us, that is, economically extort us to do a boring and useless job, or corrupt our balanced needs into expanding consumerism. But let's say capitalism is something you really want to do, but not all that much to make a chain of restaurants worldwide, just something for local people more or less as a hobby, then a non-expanding, money-free capitalism is possible.

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: On the quality and inputs thing, I get what you're saying about needing to produce less, but the inputs needed to make a better product than a similar cheap product is greater. So I'm willing to concede that it's a little murkier than I characterised it.

Yep. Let's say today we produce 30 models of cars that fulfill the same function, yet they end up on the dump in 10 years. Let's say we use some more resources than it takes to make one of these to produce only 1 type of a car, but we make it really hi-tech, that will last many decades. We'll have a wonderful car, and a lot more resources left. All we actually need is 1 model that has all or is moddable, the other 29 were some people's marketing plans to make the little green imaginary papers.

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: Quality of life. Absolutely. Daniel Quinn once said something awesome. Our system is good for products and bad for people. The egalitarian systems of the past (and some that have survived through to today) are good for people but bad for products.

This is it, we let ourselves be used by products. Some things are not worth of having many similar products around. Standardize our sockets, cables, voltages, but also cars, living standard and approximate daily callory intake. Then we're free to go on a binge in areas that really matter, like raising children (quality, not quantity), raising/satisfying curiosity (formerly known as education) and pursuing a career than means more than just shifting around the green papers.

Speaking as an esotericist,[esotericism] the pure energy of purpose is the highest one conceivable and our solar system is not evolved enough to handle it. The highest we can handle is the energy of love and all the purpose and everything we know is basically derived from love. Even so, this energy of purpose is the most destructive thing just after the energy of religion. As a destructive force, it has the ability to cut the crap, make room for something new and make us succeed in things that really matter. However, if it's the highest thing, then when attempting to handle it we should have already gone through all the stepping stones of emotions, intellect, wisdom and so on, so we won't screw this up.
I see Agent Smith went right through towards a purpose without even considering love or wisdom.
[/esotericism]

Please, what was the question again? People are driven to expand, extorted by scarcity. But whatever they achieve, is taken from them by their small buying power and goes to a few rich people's hands, so they need to expand again. This is the principle of growth and scarcity. Removal of scarcity is an anti-growth mechanism.

(11-01-2013 09:03 AM)Ghost Wrote: Yeah, I'm not getting the mechanics of RBE. All of that maglev stuff went over my head.

Let the computer keep track of resources, surplus resources and of demands that come from the people and from outside the city. Then let the nearest computer use some robotic arm to put the requested surplus stuff into boxes and send it by an automatic maglev train over to the city where it's needed.
There's no politics, no human decision needed to count the resources, to keep track of the demand and to send stuff in boxes. However, of course it needs hell a lot of hi-tech infrastructure to work. It wouldn't work with asphalt roads, fossil fuels and concrete cities, the late 19th century technologies.

This is the quote I've been searching for. It's here, after 1:02:00.
"In the future, the question people will ask is: "Wouldn't everybody be uniform?" The question of uniformity is essentially this: They will uniformly like anyone they meet. Uniformly share ideas and resources. Uniformly share knowledge with anyone else and uniformly courteous with everyone else. That's the only kind of uniformity."
- Jacque Fresco